The Joe Rogan Experience - #136 - Daniel Pinchbeck (Part 1)

Episode Date: September 8, 2011

Joe sits down with Daniel Pinchbeck.

The Joe Rogan Experience. We're gonna get crazy. Taking a long ride down some of my favorite schools of thought with this guy here. Daniel Pinchbeck is an author, if you've never heard of him, he's got a great book called Breaking Open the Head. And another one called 2012, The Return of Quetzalcoatl. Is that how I, did I say it right? Good enough. Good enough, close enough.

Quetzalcoatl. And just an all-around fascinating dude. Thanks for coming by, man. I'm sorry you got stuck in traffic, but it's almost appropriate because you're sort of a little bit of a doom and gloom, end of civilization sort of a dude, and there's a giant power outage in LA that fuck traffic upside down well yeah now that I know that I feel better about the

situation yeah do you though oh finally some apocalyptic shit's happening and while I'm here perfect in New York we just had a hurricane and an earthquake in one week yeah I moved here when the earthquake happened I moved here like only like a month after the earthquake in 94 happened, and it was this feeling of humility in LA that I liked. Like, when I first got here, I was like, people seem kind of shook up, but they seem pretty friendly. You know, sort of almost like, you know, any sort of a natural disaster does to any big

group of people. You know, they... What are you doing there, buddy? I'm looking at your alpha brain. You want some? What is it? It's on nootropics. It's vitamins for cognitive function.

Sure, why not? We'll get brighter. Yes, 1.5 million people are doing power right now, I think was the last... In Los Angeles? In Los Angeles right now, which is kind of crazy.

Yeah, it is crazy. I mean, that's a lot of fucking people. We sell those. I'll get you a bottle of those things, man. We just started putting those out on onnit.com, O-N-N-I-T dot com. And what it is is there's a lot of different things that people take to improve mental function, and we just put the highest ingredients together and started selling it.

Nice. It's fascinating stuff, man. You know, the science of it is a little sketchy. A lot of people call it bullshit, but I think it works. It works for me, man. Even if it's just a placebo effect, I'll take all the lies that you tell me if I believe them. It seems like it works for me, too. Well, the dreams are no question.

You take them and you have these crazy, vivid, rememberable dreams. It's very unusual. And supposedly it's because of choline. Is that how you say it? Is that the nutrient? I believe it's because of choline is that how you say it is that the other nutrient i believe you said it's called choline but apparently it's known to stimulate dreams it gives you fucking weird creepy memorable dreams i got a weird dream about a werewolf and a gorilla having sex and i was trying to be quiet and get out of the room before they realized i was there because you know i was last night i laying in bed and I was looking up your books on Amazon.

And the one cover he has is so trippy. I actually spent a good time just scrolling up and down on my browser just looking at your cover. Which one? Breaking open the head? I think so, yeah. The one that has the mushroom in the middle and then it's just like, it was fucking awesome. That's how stoned I was last night.

Dude, you're here when this is... What if this really was going down? Like right now in Los Angeles. Are you prepared? Because I know you're a big 2012 advocate, and I've talked to you about... Well, I'm just out of Burning Man, so at least I have my flashlight and a camelback.

Did you just leave Burning Man? Yeah, three days ago. Wow. How was it? It was great. Now, you're like my age, right? 45. I'm 44.

Are you not tired of those crazy hippies yet? The really nutty ones? No, you know, whatever. I mean, I like the whole scene. I mean, it's all sorts of genius people there, actually. Yes, definitely. Extraordinary, like not just hippies, but the heads of all the technology companies. I had a debate with some Google exec who's a yoga practitioner.

I have lots of great conversations around there. It's all the psychedelic community. I spent a lot of time with this woman who runs the Women's Visionary Congress and my friend John Perry Barlow who wrote lyrics for the Grateful Dead and started Electronic Freedom Foundation. It's actually an amazing

brain trust of human oddities and eccentric fossils. I believe that. But there's also a lot of douchebags, and you've got to wade through them. And what you are is like this figurehead for this psychedelic movement in sort of a lot of ways. So you must get a lot of crackpots. And when I say douchebags, it's not their fault. I don't know.

There's a lot of crazy people. Honestly, I actually didn't have one douchebag experience. And a lot of people did come up to me who had read my books or seen the film. And people were extremely respectful and actually kind of moving. So many people told me that the books had affected them or impacted their lives or whatever. I mean, every Dead show I've ever been to or any Fish show I've ever been to, there's never been douchebags. Even though you would think there would be a shitload of douchebags,

everyone has this positive vibe to them. So everyone, even if there are douchebags even though you think you would think there would be a shitload douchebags everyone has like this positive vibe to them so everyone even if there are a douchebag they still have like this underlining yeah i'm like a happy and love i want to give you love and positive energy it seems like the whole scene and stuff like so i just have a negative idea i think so i think you're like you're like cartman right now i'm just i lived in boulder for a while became very terrified of hippies you're very east coast i was so hippie before i was like so down with it and you're around them for a while i'm like god of hippies. You're very East Coast. I was so hippie before. I was so down with it. And you're around them for a while. God, so many people are fucking crazy. Everybody's crazy.

Republicans are crazy. Right-wing Christians are crazy. I mean, you look at the Republican convention. You look at these speeches, these debates that they're having. It's like one nutty fucking person after another nutty person. I mean, this fucking... The guy from California, the guy from california the guy from um um massachusetts rather mitnam romney he's he's a mormon i mean at a certain

point in time you got to go come on man really you believe that joseph smith this 14 year old kid found these golden tablets with the the lost works of jesus and only you could read them because you had a magic rock really right at a certain point time? I mean, how is a guy like that allowed to even run for president? Man. If there's certain things that you believe, do you think there should be a line that like someone can pull you aside and go, come on man, this is crazy. It would be very hard to draw that line at this point. I mean, people, you know,

believing in the Bible and so on, it's hard enough. Well, how about the 6,000 thousand year people the people that really believe the earth is six thousand years old there's a lot of them sarah palin she really believes that a lot of people do i think you learn from that movie red state that that like everybody there's this big center of the world that's really crazy and like fucking they believe crazy shit like you can't even, I just watched that Wild Whites of West Virginia.

Oh yeah. I mean, those people believe probably things that you would be amazed. I don't think they're thinking about that. They're just pill people, pill popping people

and partiers. Yeah. Have you seen that? The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia? Nope. It's a fascinating yet terrifying documentary

that Johnny Knoxville put together about this family in West Virginia that's completely crazy. All they do, like, they're just constantly committing crimes and selling pills and going on rampages and get arrested. It's just a fascinating family that's just not living by the rules that you or I live by. You know, it's interesting.

Burning Man was sold out this year, and I think the first time that it was ever sold out, did it seem overly crowded, or did it seem like, why did they even put a limit to it? Well, they don't have a control over that. It's the Bureau of Land Management. I think it's actually because it counts as a city. It's only allowed to grow 3% per year, so it was growing from 51 to 54,000 or something like that. Right. Something like that. So, yeah, I mean, it could easily go up to 75,000 or 100,000 in terms of the space there.

I mean, they can just keep adding avenues and expanding it and so on. Did you see any awesome art? Did you see any, like, wow, they took it to the next level type shit this year? Yeah, there was some beautiful stuff. There was a huge model of the Trojan horse, which 300 Greeks and white togas dragged through the gates. Then they blew it up in spectacular fashion on Friday night. There was lots of fun stuff. That sounds pretty fucking badass.

I want to go so bad. I talked about it maybe 20 podcasts ago. I was thinking about going, and I'm mad at myself for not going. My perceptions are always there's going to be some really cool people, but just going to wade through some knuckleheads to get to them. But you're sounding like it's not that way. You're sounding like it's pretty positive overall. Yeah, I mean, I still like it.

Still like it. What if December 21, 2012 is the big day, and that's etched in stone, and a lot of people's ideas about a lot of the shit that you write about and a lot of the shit that people think of about the coming of the next age, if it rolls around and nothing happens, then what? Once again, people would have to look at whatever I

said and read about it. I never particularly said that anything was going to happen on that date. You absolutely have not. On the other hand, it seems to me that it's super clear that we're in the middle of a transformation that we can see now the global economy is buckling.

The planetary ecology is also buckling. We've hit peak oil. A lot of the resources are in serious depletion. So yeah, we're faced with an end game for the current global civilization that we're in. Has that peak oil thing been clearly established? Yeah, it's been very clearly established. So everyone agrees it's not a debated thing? Well, I mean, of course there's some debate

and there's some disinformation. There's a lot of money involved, but if you look at what the main geologists talk about, it's a prediction that was made back in the 70s even. And that's why they're trying to get this oil in Canada. These big protests have been happening on the White House lawn where Daryl Hannah got arrested. One of the NASA's top climate scientists got arrested and they're protesting this extraction, which is apparently incredibly inefficient. Yeah, of course. But it's why we are, you know, in wars in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq.

And, you know, why we're trying to hold down our access to the remaining resources. But yeah, so I never anticipated anything exactly what happened on December 21, 2012, although it certainly might. But I think that what we need to do and what I tried to do in my work up to this point is really try to take a big step back and look at our situation

and factor in all sorts of stuff that the modern worldview is not really factoring in, which for me includes shamanism, the DMT experience, psychic experience in general, the kind of psychic capacities that actually many people are aware of that happen all the time, whether it's synchronicity or telepathy. We were on the phone today. I talked to you about it. I picked up my phone, and I was going through the contacts to find your number, and the phone rang, and it was you.

I love that shit. That's as creepy as it gets. There's a lot of minutes in a day, man. It happens more and more the older I get. How do you know when I'm calling you, man? There's a lot of goddamn minutes in a day. When was the last time I fucking called you? I mean, yeah, you were supposed to be on the podcast

today and we had emailed each other about it, but we hadn't talked on the phone in a long-ass time. That's a weird coincidence. Right. Well, I mean, you could say that it's weird and creepy, but then you kind of get past that point and you just kind of integrate it. And it's like, okay, somehow there's actually one consciousness that's kind of working through

all of us. And, you know, as time moves on in this period, it seems like those synchronicities are speeding up and our psychic capacities are somehow intensifying. But I will say that one idea I'm working on for December 21, 2012 is to utilize the date, because now there's so much popular focus on it, to create a kind of global event, which would be a kind of spectacle. I'm working with composers and a team from Cirque du Soleil, and they're kind of putting together a concept for a show that would kind of celebrate humans' evolution, you know, humanity's evolution to this present point, and then ending with a synchronized peace meditation, kind of global focus on unity, with the idea that you could take the energy that's pointed towards that day, and there's so much fear around it

and anxiety and trepidation, and actually make it into the most awesome thing possible, where it's like, well, look where we've arrived at and look at our opportunities now to make a shift and a jump into a new form of planetary civilization. Well, this is the clearest time in human history where the common person, any person really,

has a direct influence over an incredible amount of people with viral information, with videos, and with anything that you write that really resonates with people. You can hit an amazing amount of people now. So a guy like you could get in touch with a bunch of other people who could do exactly the same thing, and a ripple effect can go on, and it can hit millions and millions easy. There's never been an opportunity to do anything like that.

Yeah, I mean, we'd totally love to have you involved with our Unify Earth project. I would love to, sure. We should do it at SeaWorld. Sure. Wow. Actually, we're actually working with... It's awesome to watch. At the moment, we're actually in negotiation with the Mexican government to use Chichen Itza,

which is considered by the Mayans to be the heart of the Mayan world. You know what would be the shit, dude? A Toby Keith concert at Chichen Itza. Would that be the most ironic thing of all time? Toby Keith is like this super rah-rah American country music singer. He's like, Saddam Hussein will kick your ass. He's like one of those guys. But he's a good singer. He's got Saddam Hussein will kick your ass He's like one of those guys But he's a good singer

He's got good songs Some of them are real knucklehead raw raw raw songs I just think him on the fucking pyramids Playing a concert Might be one of the most ironic things of all time How awesome America is You can love it or leave it He had a good song about smoking weed

With Willie Nelson though He's got good music about smoking weed with Willie Nelson, though. He's got good music. He's got good music. I just think it would be funny. It would be funny. Yeah, I'm scared of Chichen Itza, though. Don't ever forget that dream, Joe. Write that dream down right now. It's on the internet now.

We can draw this dream for you. You're right. Boys should never stop dreaming. Don't ever stop. I think, as you do, that things are moving in a certain direction. And I wonder how much people steer it. How much things like this steer it. Communication online steers it.

Because it seems to me this is the only time where people have been able to sort of merge in this way globally on their own and do it on a regular basis. People are addicted to just going on Twitter, addicted to communicating with people on message boards and on Facebook. There's an interconnectivity that's never existed before. So an idea, the idea of a hive mind influenced by anyone is way different

now than it's ever been in human history, as far as we know, right? Absolutely, yeah. It's an amazing time. Yeah, for sure. I mean, one idea that a lot of different people are moving towards is this idea that maybe humanity is on the verge of transitioning into being a super-organism. That we're coming to awareness of ourselves as a singular being, in a sense. And then we can begin to act more symbiotically rather than parasitically or aggressively. more symbiotically rather than parasitically or aggressively. There was a really fascinating article recently written on creativity and how people are always praising creativity

and looking forward to getting new and creative ideas, but that other people's creativity actually makes people uncomfortable. It makes people uncomfortable and uneasy. And the idea that someone had come up with these ideas that they didn't. And you wonder if like the the really powerful push towards fundamentalism the really powerful push towards the 6 000 year old earth kind of shit you know and follow the bible kind of shit is really the same thing as someone well i mean trying to confine creativity they're trying to confine enlightenment the same reason but i i

guess my feeling is basically you know we we live in a culture where there's basically people are being indoctrinated not to think. They're being indoctrinated by the media, the mainstream culture, by the education system to be ignorant, to not question, to not develop their independent capacity of thought. Are you saying this from the education system or are you saying this from the media? Yeah, yeah, from both, I think. Okay, but the media does not make you dumb, right? Oh, yes, it does.

Does it? The media makes people incredibly stupid. It makes you dumb? Me? You. You can't watch CNN and become a... I don't watch that stuff, but I mean... But if you did, you think it would affect you?

Yeah, but if I'm in a hotel room and I watch that stuff for a couple days, I feel like I'm having a lobotomy. Whoa, really? Sure. Is this CNN? Yeah, of course. You can't just see it would affect you? Yeah, if I'm in a hotel room and I watch that stuff for a couple days, I feel like I'm having a lobotomy. Whoa, really? Is there CNN? Yeah, of course. You can't just see it as a program? No, all these things are, from my perspective, they're basically kind of holding the mass consciousness, the planetary consciousness at a certain low level or low frequency. You know, where it's passive, consumerist, fear-based.

You know, there's this violent activity, very dis, consumerist, fear-based, you know, there's this violent activity, very disjointed. It creates a lot of frustration and anxiety. There's no deeper analysis. There's no attempt to create like a coherent, you know, understanding of what's happening in any sense. I could see your point that maybe perhaps it isn't used to its utmost abilities or the capabilities that we would have for it, but I don't think that it's not a good form of entertainment. I don't think it has to be either or. I feel like you could sit home and watch a fucking silly TV show

and it doesn't hurt you. I mean, I think this idea that we're helpless to media constantly bombarding us with these images and ideals and that we have to accept them. I think that's silly. And I think that, honestly, with the Internet, you look at the society that's growing out of the Internet,

look at movements like Anonymous, look at shit like this, things that have never happened before, these giant groups moving forward and taking down websites and taking down companies that they feel have acted unjustly. No one's ever been able to do something like that before. That's Stevie, if you want it. You're going to have some coffee. Thanks.

Yeah, well, I mean, so we have two things. A number of things are happening simultaneously. And that's another thing that's very interesting about our time is that things are getting pretty complicated. Now, one problem with television in general is that it's designed to reduce everything into tiny little sound bites. You know, when Lincoln and Jefferson debated in the 1860s, the debates lasted eight hours. You know, when we have a debate on TV, each person gets like 36 seconds for this response, 22 seconds. We're basically used to everything being spoon fed and dumbed down to an absolute level of stupidity. You know, and basically the problem is that because our scenario on the planet is very complex

at this point, we actually need to be able to articulate and analyze at a much deeper level. So yes, we have two things going on. We have the one directional mass media, which I really am convinced is basically a kind of lobotomy machine that anesthetizes people into an ultimate state of idiocy and consumerist passivity. And then we have the development of this new interactive media, which is having profound effects and will continue to have profound effects. And if you go look at the history of media, every time there's a new form of media that's very powerful, it transforms the society, the political system, the government, changes everything.

You could never have had an empire until you had a written code of laws that could be distributed to the borders and beyond. You could never have had a modern representational democracy, nation state, unless you had the printing press, which distributed enough materials that everybody could participate in civic dialogues. Now with this interactive technology, it potentially points towards a much deeper transition in our political and social paradigm, potentially towards a way from centralized control hierarchy to more of a kind of distributed or direct democracy. And interconnectedness as human beings in general. No one's been this

close to this many people just through online communication. No one has ever had that kind of an influence before by such a wide variety of people and ideas, you know, all coming at you. And look how incredibly new it is. I mean, we're just adapting. We're just like treading water, trying to catch up with this force that our culture has unleashed. And it's good or is it no? It's awesome. Is it as awesome? Well, if you love change, it's great. I mean, if you're somebody who heads Warner Records,

you're probably scratching your head at this point. I had the most fascinating conversation with a guy who was trying to say that Google was bad and the idea of the Internet search is bad. I go, why? He goes, because it used to be if you wanted knowledge, you had to go look for it. I was like, wow, that might be the craziest fucking thing i've ever heard you think it should be hard

to find that shit it should be hard you should have to go to a library and look up the right book it should take hours no you should be able to save your phone that's very much like people who talk about the big oh you shouldn't take a psychedelic because it's like a shortcut to the mystical experience right and of course the answer to that is like you know what's wrong with a shortcut if i'm trying to get somewhere am i going to go like all around and like a circuitous, boring route? Or am I going to just take the frigging shortcut? That reminds me of a joke that Terrence McKenna used to say that some guy practiced a city of levitation for 40 years and figured out finally how to float. And he came up to the Buddha and he said, Master, I can walk across the water.

And the Buddha said, but the ferry is only a nickel. and he said, Master, I can walk across the water. And the Buddha said, but the fairy's only a nickel. You know, I mean, take the fucking mushroom. Take a chance, dude. Take a shortcut. Not only that, the idea that you are independent from nature and that you don't need some help in any way. I mean, you're constantly getting help from nutrients and vitamins and protein

and all these different things that you absorb through nature. But then when it comes to this, that you think may or may not do something to your mind, you're not, you know, I can get there naturally. Yeah, yeah. Well, to get back to the Google search, I mean, yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, the fact that we now have so much knowledge and information, you know, at our disposal is an extraordinary thing, you know, but then the question is still, how do we manage that? What do we do with it?

And what type of, you know, society what type of society can we pull ourselves into? Because at the moment what we have is not going to last very much longer. I like what you said, pull ourselves into. Because it's really going to have to be that because you're going to have to pull away from the system that we have now, especially the financial system. We've learned from when Ron Paul wanted the audits of the bailouts and people found out how many trillions of dollars had been sent into this whole idea of bailouts and where these tax dollars went. I think a lot of people became really disillusioned

and disenfranchised and had no connection to it. You know what I mean? I mean, when it happened, did it make any sense to you? When you were hearing about the bailouts, did any of that make any sense to you? When you were hearing about the bailouts, did any of that make any sense to you? I don't pay attention to anything. It seems like a system you can't fix. So it seems like, you know,

it almost feels like trying to go against the machine that's currently in place is so intangible. It's so gigantic. The financial system is completely and utterly corrupt and unrecognizable. It's impossible to understand. Right.

Well, that's like a bunch of the work I've been doing over the last few years. I mean, in the film, actually, we interviewed you for the film. We didn't end up using your interview. We just couldn't somehow splice it in. People put it online. In 2012, Time for Change, we interviewed this guy, Bernard Lyotard, who was an economist. He was one of the architects of the euro. He wrote a great book called The Future of Money.

And in that book, he, you know, and in our film also, he discussed how the financial system is broken. It really doesn't matter at this point who you put in control, because it's still just like a car with no brakes. But that actually we're going to have to reinvent instruments for exchanging value

that actually have fundamentally different value systems connected to them. So, for instance, he proposes a currency which he calls the Terra that has a negative interest charge. So it's a new trading currency, a global trading currency that's indexed not to just a virtual abstraction like our money currently is, but actually is indexed to a basket of real world goods and resources that decline in value over time, because most things do.

So the longer you held on to a terra, the less it would be worth. So instead of a gold standard, it would be based on a bunch of different valuable things? A bundle of resources that would include fuel and wheat and processed foods and unprocessed goods and so on. And as a summation of all of that, it would actually decline in value. It would have what's called a demurrage charge. So when people got a bunch of these tarot cards through some business deal, rather than seeking to hoard them or hold on to them, that wouldn't work.

So they would be best used by putting them back into circulation, by sharing them or whatever. So that's Leotard's concept, and one of many concepts. We're actually publishing a book through my company, Evolver, called Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein. It's actually already up on the internet and you can get copies. But he actually puts together a whole paradigm looking at the inevitability of the financial system breaking down and really seeing that rather than just

having one monopoly of a value exchanging instrument like money that's controlled by private banking interests, you could really create a whole ecology of different ways of exchanging value that would be used for different purposes. Do you think that the government would ever allow something like that to actually take place? I mean, it almost seems like trying to create a government inside a government. Well, I mean, it's happened before. I mean, for instance, in the Depression, they reissued a lot of local currencies.

It was also done in the 19th century, obviously. I read about a town in North Carolina or South Carolina that's trying to do that right now. Exactly. Well, I think that's definitely going to be on the horizon because people are not going to be able to use this currency. Yeah, it was a small town, and they had their own currency in this town. And there was a debate about its legality. And in fact, if you look at the bankruptcy of the government and the effects of peak oil and all this other stuff going on,

the capacity of the federal government to intervene and to meddle may actually become radically reduced in the next years because there's just not going to be the money available for that kind of endless effort. Damn. My face is melting. Thinking about what he's saying? Yeah, there's just so much information I'm thinking about right now. Well, you know, is it possible that none of this will actually happen, that we'll sort of stumble into the finish line?

No, it's not possible. It's not possible. It's absolutely not possible. So you think it's absolutely 100% that the society that we currently enjoy is going to collapse? Absolutely. 100%. I mean, it's obvious. What kind of a time frame are you going to be in it? You know,

could be a year, could be 10 or 15 years. But the point is to recognize that we're in it now. I mean, our faith in capitalism, capitalism is a system that has an inherent instability to it, and basically what it requires is constantly new markets that need to be turned

into money, so you can keep the dynamism that way, you can keep the debt growing, and you keep extending the credit. But I think what we're going to realize soon enough is that capitalism was not a final system, it was a transitional system. We don't know what that transition is into yet, but capitalism is like an adolescent system. It's like aggressive, compulsive, competitive. At a certain point, you have to shift into

maturity and adulthood, and you have to let go of some of that adolescent compulsion. How important is psychedelics in this equation? Because best tool in my opinion to sort of calm down that those instincts those competitive super hyper aggressive instincts is psychedelics and it's we tried most illegal things no i haven't you should try it you think that really helped yeah it's awesome it's funny because it makes me violent when i watch it really yeah why no i'm just kidding it's so fun so i think that psychedelics have tremendous value i mean but you know i people always say that i'm an advocate of psychedelics and i watch it. Really? Why? No, I'm just kidding. It's so fun. So I think that psychedelics have tremendous value. People always say that I'm an advocate of psychedelics, and I suppose that's true to a certain extent,

but I also feel that it's an individual decision. They're not for everybody, and obviously they're still illegal and frowned upon in our society. Right. But the fact is that one of the values of psychedelics is they kind of decondition you from your present state of consciousness

and your kind of social ideology and belief system. You know, there's a kind of peeling away. I mean, I remember the first time I took mushrooms, one of the first experiences I had was going to a deli and buying something with money and just finding it totally ludicrous that our culture invested so much belief in these wrinkly, brown, ugly pieces of paper,

you know, and that everybody was kind of so disconnected from their present experience and focused on the sports or the stock ticker or all this crap, in my opinion. You know, so I think that peeling away back to a kind of, you know, phenomenological, as they say, level of just presence of being, that's a very powerful thing. And we tend, you know, as humans, it's very easy for us to get lost in abstractions and concepts, and then we believe in our concepts. We think that they're real. So the psychedelics can break that investment we've made in all these things that we think are real that are just abstractions and concepts. Does it have to be either or? enjoy a good movie and still be a person who believes that we're evolving

as a consciousness and that we are in an adolescent state of evolution and somehow or another we're in a transitionary period and we're all coming, but can't you just enjoy the X-Men? I actually love the X-Men. You love the X-Men? So that's cool? Movies are cool? Just tell me what's cool. Movies are cool, but TV's not.

Do you ever see Walking Dead? It's a pretty fucking good show, man. There's zombies and there's people trying to survive. It's fucking fun. Sometimes I like to sit in front of something and watch some shit that somebody created that's supposed to entertain me. I don't think it has to cut your capacity

for thinking and reason and logic and original thought. I don't think it has to. I think it could just be fun to watch. I think a lot of people are conditioned by it. A lot of people are weak. But a lot of people fucking eat cheeseburgers all day and become 700 pounds. Well, I mean, you know, I'm not like in a, you know, I don't judge. You enjoy whatever you want to enjoy.

I don't really care. I mean, personally, you know, what I like are kind of, when I get excited now about popular narratives, it's more because I see in them the seeds of part of this transformation that's underway. Now, for instance, if you look at like a lot of the most archetypally huge stories that our culture keeps telling us, which includes the mutant, you know, the X-Men, Harry Potter, you know, Lord of the Rings, well, Lord of the Rings to a certain extent, but Star Wars, let's say, Avatar, the story that's repeated over and over again is there's like this hero's journey.

And as part of that hero's journey, there has to be a learning to use our psychic faculties. You know, so, you know, the Matrix. He's trying to tell us we're all superheroes, dude. Yeah. So if you look at mutants, they're going to this academy. They have to learn how to master these paranormal gifts. You know, Harry Potter, you have to learn to cast your spells. Star Wars, you have to use the force. You know, I actually, the more that I've thought about it and the more my own experiences have

kind of echoed, you know, some of these things, I think that these stories are so powerful because they represent a kind of yearning that people have for a kind of initiatory training and extrasensory perception. And that is something that our society has rigorously denied us. And I think if you look at what happens to you when you're an adolescent, like let's say you're 15, 20 years old, you have this beginning when you're a young teenager, you have this tremendous sense of expectation. You're waiting for some transformative thing to happen to you.

And then it doesn't happen. And so instead you accept a lot of basically crappy, degraded substitutes, like dulling entertainment, like watching athletes do this and that or whatever, rather than having gone through something that you always just know is missing. But then the culture kind of hides it from you. And I think that that thing that's missing from our culture is this direct initiatory process. How is the culture hiding it from you, though? You know, I think the culture,

the water sort of seeks its own level on a lot of these things, and a lot of people just get lazy and don't look for it. And this culture that's opening up right now, experiences now are being detailed and talked about that people could never understand before. The connection that people have together through the internet now, there's never been anything

like this before. I don't think it's getting dumber. I think there's always going to be a certain amount of dumb people. I think there's always going to be a certain amount of people that smoke cigarettes. I just stopped recently, which was very exciting. Did you really? You smoke cigarettes? I know. Is that pathetic? Wow! You're such a smart guy.

I know. I know. I know. What the fuck is that? I know. I apologize. That's what a ruthless drug. He doesn't get it.

No, I do get it. I want you to get it. Bro, I swear to God I get it. I want to start fucking putting cigarettes in your mouth. I fuck with you because I love you because you're one of my best friends, but I get it. Actually, it was through ayahuasca that I stopped.

Actually, it was through ayahuasca that I started also, to be honest, because there's a whole relationship between ayahuasca shamanism and the Amazon and tobacco. Right. That's when I first started smoking. They blow tobacco on you, right? Theyasca that I started also, to be honest, because there's a whole relationship between ayahuasca shamanism and the Amazon and tobacco. Right. That's when I first started smoking. They blow tobacco on you, right?

They do. And it's also, there's something about tobacco and ayahuasca that are very synergetic together. I mean, it's a, you know, tobacco is considered a very important power plant. You tried the patch first? Why didn't you try cigars? Well, you can get natural tobacco. Yeah, I did natural tobacco. I tried, yeah.

Cigars are way better for you. I mean, they're probably not the best thing for you, but they're better for you than cigarettes. It's all the chemicals in cigarettes that are I spoke to natural American spirits. I stayed at least at that level. That shit seems like it hurts me more, though. When I do natural spirits, it's like the next

day I'm coughing up blackness. It's because it's not giving you any numbing power. It's like cigars. There's 590 fucking ingredients in cigarettes that, by the way, are all government approved. Did anybody really go over all those 590? No. A lobbyist, right?

Who the fuck went over all those ingredients and made sure that they're all cool? People are dying half a million a year in America alone directly related to cigarette smoking. What you were saying though, a lot of people probably also feel like they did accomplish what they wanted in life. I think that seems

almost negative that you say it like that because I talked to my dad. He's like, fuck yeah, this is exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I love my life. I'm happy. I'm married. That's kind of rare though, dude. Don't you think? Your dad's pretty smart. No, I think that's just a negative look.

I think a lot of people like what they do. I mean, there is definitely. You got a great job, though. You got an easy job. No, no, I'm not talking about me at all. I'm not talking about me at all. I'm talking about, like, my mom, my dad, like, everyone I grew up around with, they all liked what they did. Well, you might have been lucky, and you grew up in the Midwest, and you grew up in a different time.

All I'm offering you is, like, offering you is my way of thinking about it. Your way of thinking might be different. Oh, no, no, no. My personal experience growing up was like, I thought there would be this amazing thing that would happen. You've got to do something to have those things, man. I've always said that there should be some sort of a right of manhood. It doesn't have to be even a manhood thing

attached to something manly or aggressive. I mean, to finding your character, finding your limitations, doing something extraordinary. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, some of the thinkers that I wrote about in my books talked about how cultures need to have some type of initiatory ritual.

And if they don't have it consciously constructed, it'll end up being unconsciously destructive. It'll happen through war or through destruction of the environment or something. So one theory that I have about the quote unquote 2012 or this transition that we're in is that it's almost on an unconscious level. Humanity has not been able to change its behavior, right? So it's like it's on an unconscious level. We're kind of willing ourselves into a state of catastrophe to bring about an initiation and thereby a transformation of consciousness.

100% sure? Of that? 94%. That's strong, man. That's very strong. Those are strong words. Who knows what the fuck is going to happen? That's what I say. I say it could be some sort of a meteor impact or it could be some sort of a Skynet thing. I do believe that something is is going to happen? That's what I say. I say it could be some sort of a meteor impact or it could be some sort of a Skynet thing.

I do believe that something is absolutely going to happen. It just seems to me that things are moving at such a furious pace that it just can't last. And I think it's a natural cycle, man. I really do. I think the reason why we're having all these natural disasters is that's a part of a natural cycle too. Yeah, but if you talk to my grandfather about TVs, he like like he was like wow this is crazy tv was invented you could see tv where you know they probably it's just us living our life and then during around a certain age we grow up to a certain point where we're like yeah it's fucking spinning out of control that is back

in the 40s it's probably like charlie chaplin thought it was spinning out of control that is possible but it also could be that human beings, even though we love to think of ourselves as being separate from all the other things in this world, we are a natural thing. And even though we have plastic fucking cars and glass lenses for our fucking cell phones, we are still a natural thing. And we are subject to the natural cycles of this Earth, of this superorganism, of the universe itself.

And even when we see crazy weather patterns and wild crazy shit, there could easily also be crazy cultural patterns. And that culture, even though we can create it and we do have control of it, it may be very well a natural movement, as natural as your evolution from baby to adulthood. It could be a natural thing. Could be whoopies. We've published some. Could be whoopies make me want to fucking choke a bit. But that's a good one, man. On the web magazine.

I like that. That's a shirt. A web magazine that I run, Reality Sandwich, and we've been publishing some excerpts. Which is not Mac-friendly, by the way. I want you to know that. I don't know if you know that. It is. Both of these computers, I tried to go to your website today and just search my name, obviously, first.

But then Joe Rogan's name. And both of them kept on crashing my browser. I've never had that problem. Really? Google Chrome. Check it out. Do you use one of those old Macs with a trackball? No, I use a new Mac.

Remember those trackballs in the center of it? Anyway, we published a few pieces by a German scientist, a guy, Dieter Braus, who wrote a book called Revolution 2012. We've published a few pieces by a German scientist, a guy, Dieter Braus, who wrote a book called Revolution 2012. And he's one of a bunch of people who are arguing that a lot of what's happening has to do with changes that are taking place throughout the whole solar system. They have to do with the sun changing, that actually the electromagnetic environment of the Earth is shifting. What is supposed to be the galactic alignment on December 21, 2012? Because I've heard Neil Tyson, who I very much respect. Who is that?

Pooh Poohit. He's a scientist. A very famous internet scientist. Not internet scientist, I shouldn't say internet scientist. He's a fucking, he's a scholar of a very well-respected, I believe he's an astrophysicist or something along those lines. But super, super brilliant guy. He poo-pooed that there was any alignment

whatsoever? He said it's a constant thing. That alignment, that same alignment happens all the time. He's like, you know, the fact that everyone's making it out that December 21st, 2012 was the first time that this happens in 25,000 years. He's like, that's nonsense. And he's, I believe, he knows more than I do. Well, he probably knows more than you do, too. Yeah, for sure. So, I mean, I can just give you my little interpretation.

I mean, my understanding is that it's simply an optical alignment, which means there's no particular reason that we would know of that would be such a tremendous transformative thing, where the winter solstice sun rises within the dark rift at the center of the Milky Way. So in a sense, it's an eclipse of the center of the Milky Way by the sun on the winter solstice on that particular date. So that date had a lot of significance for them. It was like the key moment in the year. And they considered the sun to be the first father, and they saw the dark rift at the center of the Milky Way as the cosmic mother, or they also called it apparently a black hole,

which is interesting because only in the last 15 years did our astronomers discover there is a huge black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Well, they know that there's actually a supermassive black hole in the center of every single galaxy, and that that supermass huge black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Well, they know that there's actually a supermassive black hole in the center of every single galaxy, and that that supermassive black hole is one half of 1% of the mass of every galaxy. So if you have a giant galaxy, it's a much bigger black hole. And they even have, there's the first photograph they've ever taken

of a black hole eating a black hole. It's fucking crazy.